Grad School Difficulties

Summers in grad school are weird. So far, I am not good at them. Mostly, this summer has consisted of me sitting around going “What the fuck just happened.” Which I would be totally fine with and embrace (who doesn’t love a little reflection/major soul searching?) except that apparently, in grad school, people expect you to continue accomplishing shit in the summertime. Also, apparently, if I want to continue on in academia, I need to learn how to be self motivated and structure my own time more efficiently. So, I’m going to try to work through some of my difficulties here in hopes of moving beyond them in the near future!

Difficulty 1: Academia=Bureaucracy=Me being disillusioned sad and unproductive. I’ve been struggling with some bureaucratic hoops I’ve had to jump through. I’ve been rejected multiple times when I’ve reached out to faculty to help me with my writing this summer (a reaching out and faculty interaction that my program requires). Lots of people have reminded me that everyone is busy and faculty’s unavailability is not a reflection on me or the validity of my research interests. And logically I understand that argument. As a human being, repeated rejection takes its toll, especially when I have my own uncertainties and self doubt about my abilities and my research interests.

Difficulty 2: I am not (yet) cut out for the kind of constant performance that is required of academics at prestigious institutions. I think this kind of constant performance is something that can be conditioned and developed over time, but right now, I needed a break from trying to perform some sort of belonging in academia for the last year. A lot of this difficulty has stemmed from my inability to self-promote and represent my own interests and abilities. ((You’d be surprised how many rhetoricians lack this ability; it’s a funny little “do as I say not as I do” quirk of our field)). At the same time, I know that the relationships I will build and the resources that are available to me while I’m here will be hugely important for the kinds of work I hope to do now and in the future. So, the performance is the means to much more important and fulfilling ends.

Difficulty 3: I am a first-generation college student. Not having my home networks of family and friends immediately available is devastating. Even more so, not having contact with those people or even the kinds of people who have shaped me thus far in my life is devastating. I’ve taken to frequenting places like “Five Guys” or the grocery store just to talk to people who work there and remind me of home and home-like people. Facebook and other online social networking spaces have been hugely helpful to me in this way by keeping me in contact with people who do things other than academia. I want to be apart of this academic world and succeed in it, but I do not want to lose the driving force of why I want to be here: to expand access and support for first-generation college students and students of working class backgrounds who believe in and can (hopefully) realize the transformative potentials of higher education.

A ray of hope: the most useful and hopeful things I’ve experienced in the last few months have been other graduate students or other first-gen college students sharing their stories of difficulty and of success. So, if you’re doing or have done this thing called grad school, keep talking about it and talking about it honestly. I appreciate you!

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4 thoughts on “Grad School Difficulties”

Regarding your last point–I am also first generation from working-class family. The thing that has really helped keep me grounded in my advocacy for working-class students has been getting involved in the local community. Specifically, my teaching at the local community college has helped me keep a focus on a balanced theoria/praxis perspective that emphasizes access to genres and literacies of power. There are usually also volunteer opportunities via your campus or other local institutions that might need your skills (e.g. literacy education). May be something to look into, if you haven’t already.

Good luck! And thanks for this post. Could really relate–summers are a strange beast in grad school. But can be immensely rewarding if you balance hard work with a little bit of R&R.